_right_, it drops
them." And he proceeded to make an observation, with which we may most
cordially agree. "I am feeling," he said, "increasingly, day by day,
that _rightness_ in imaginative writing is more important than
subject, or style, or anything else. If a story is right in its theme,
and the evolution of its theme, it will live; if it is not right, it
will die, whatever its secondary literary qualities."

In what sense the Public is the "Ultimate Critic."

I say that we may agree with this most cordially: and it need not cost
us much to own that the public is the "ultimate critic," if we mean no
more than this, that, since the public holds the purse, it rests
ultimately with the public to buy, or neglect to buy, an author's
books. That, surely, is obvious enough without the aid of fine
language. But if Mr. Hall Caine mean that the public, without
instruction from its betters, is the best judge of a book; if he
consent with Miss Corelli that the general public is a cultured public
with a great brain, and by the exercise of that great brain approves
itself an infallible judge of the rightness or wrongness of a book,
then I would respectfully ask for evidence. The poets and critics of
his time united in praising Campion as a writer of lyrics: the Great
Brain and Heart of the Public neglected him utterly for three
centuries: then a scholar and critic arose and persuaded the public
that Campion was a great lyrical writer: and now the public accepts
him as such. Shall we say, then, the Great Heart of the Public is the
"ultimate judge" of Campion's lyrics? Perhaps: but we might as well
praise for his cleanliness a boy who has been held under the pump.
When Martin Farquhar Tupper wrote, the Great Heart of the Public
expanded towards him at once. The public bought his effusions by tens
of thousands. Gradually the small voice of skilled criticism made
itself heard, and the public grew ashamed of itself; and, at length,
laughed at Tupper. Shall we, then, call the public the ultimate judge
of Tupper? Perhaps: but we might as well praise the continence of a
man who turns in disgust from drink on the morning after a drunken
fit.[A]

What is "The Public"?

The proposition that the Man in the Street is a better judge of
literature than the Critic--the man who knows little than the man who
knows more--wears (to my mind, at least) a slightly imbecile air on
the face of it. It also appears to me that people are either conf